Dec. 2, 2012: Leap of faith delivers bikes for kids

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Hopping onto my bicycle and pedaling away from home - legs pumping, wind whistling, stringy hair flying out behind me - I always tingled with the exhilaration fed by a small flame of freedom.

That red, white and blue 10-speed with the curled handlebars often carried me away from heartache, or toward a playground where imagination reigned.

Ashley Wilson's pink Huffy with the banana seat also routinely found itself on its side at the foot of a sand pile in her Concord neighborhood. Kids would climb the pile and congregate there, telling their secrets, trying out personas, laughing about nothing.

"I cannot imagine growing up without a bike," says Wilson, co-founder of the Triangle Spokes Group, a charity that provides new bicycles to children in need. "So many memories I have. We've gotten away from a kid riding off on a bike and enjoying the joys of simple play."

Wilson's charity is just one of scores you can find on our Holiday Guide to Giving at nando.com/holidaygiving. 

  "There's nothing like waking up on Christmas morning to a brand-new, shiny bike," Wilson says. "Every kid at some time asks for a bike. Who doesn't remember learning how to ride a two-wheeler? Getting your training wheels off?"

Nov. 30, 2012: Ms. Self-Righteous Pants signs off

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

As my hands work powdered sugar and softened butter into a big ball of tooth-aching sweetness, I realize again how much my fingers look like my mother's.

Sitting in the floor with the usual green bowl in front of me, I pinch off a piece of dough. Roll it between my palms. Shape it with my thumbs and middle fingers into an oblong receptacle for the chocolate I will melt a little later and smear onto the Christmas butter creams, one by one.

It's a labor-intensive offering of love that my grandmother, gone a decade now, started and that my chronically ill mother perfected. That I continue it each year is my comfort.

Such traditions are the constants for us in lives that can seem awash in variables.

So many of us have lost jobs, lost homes, lost marriages, lost loved ones recently that "adrift" becomes our go-to adjective.

Here at The News & Observer, most of us working hard to bring you the news have survived multiple buyouts and layoffs, which means, as it does with any business in similar straits, that employees have taken on duties that we wouldn't necessarily have asked for. 

Reluctance is what I brought to the request that I start writing a weekly Triangle & Co. column nearly 14 months ago. Standing atop this platform requires a certain amount of self-assurance that I wasn't sure I possessed.

Over the year, I've tried not to contribute to the cacophony of crap and complaints in the world and to instead use my words as often as possible to tell the stories of good people doing good things.

Nov. 22, 2012: A family's gratitude for a donated heart, new life

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

With every pump of blood that colors previously blue lips pink, that travels to weakened legs now walking with ease, that restores a young life that was perilously close to ending, the heart inside Lucas Santos' slim chest whispers in its two-beat rhythm: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you to a grieving family that chose Nov. 5 to donate the heart of a loved one newly lost. 

Thank you to Duke Hospital medical workers for 52 days of tender care.

Thank you to God for protection throughout a journey that began 17 years ago when Lucas was born with a heart defect and his parents, Simone and Larry Santos, were told he likely wouldn't survive.

"God has done great things, and we give him the glory," Simone says with a smile that never leaves her face. "It's been amazing how this process unfolded. God provided."

What the Santos family of Cary is praying that God will provide on this Thanksgiving Day, however, is comfort - comfort for the family of the unknown person whose heart saved their sweet boy.

"I'm so thankful that in the middle of the pain they were going through, they brought life to my son back," Simone says. "It's a deep appreciation that's hard to put into words. I think of the donor's family every day and pray that God comforts them."

Nov. 16, 2012: Charities, tell us your holiday needs

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Urban Ministries of Wake County provides a shelter for homeless women. Its Open Door Clinic serves 5,000 low-income clients. The nonprofit also offers programs that help the poor reach self-sufficiency.

But what is its greatest need right now?

Food.

"Our shelves are very low," Anne Burke, executive director emeritus, says of Urban Ministries' food pantry. "We've had nonstop demand day after day after day. We're seeing 35 families a day, up about 10 a day over last year, a huge increase."

It's hard to imagine as we prepare to sit down next week to overstuffed Thanksgiving tables how many of our neighbors aren't worrying about the best way to season a turkey or whether to attempt the fancy pie.

They're worried about having anything to eat at all.

With the backdrop of North Carolina having the fifth-highest unemployment rate in the country, The News & Observer is offering its Holiday Guide to Giving for a third year.

Nov. 2, 2012: Choices don't sully voting

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Filling out personal information on my Facebook page a few years ago, I stared at the "Political Views" space for quite a while, trying to pull down words that would properly convey an outlook that defies common categories.

"Right of nearly everyone I work with, left of nearly all family members" is what I finally came up with.

Let's see. At 18, I registered as a Democrat because that's the only flavor they sold in West Virginia at the time. Republicans were as mythical as folks of other colors.

By the 1988 election, I had moved to North Carolina. I still laugh every time I remember that I was the only person in my entire Johnston County precinct who voted in the primary for the bow-tied Paul Simon.

When I moved to Wake County, I changed my registration to unaffiliated, though I'm pretty sure there was a stretch in there when my card said Republican. Clearly, my party loyalty wins no prizes.

Perhaps it's not surprising then that the Nolan chart survey I took this week put me firmly inside the centrist category. (Find it at www.nolanchart.com/survey.)

As such, on Tuesday I will go to vote in my eighth presidential election empty of any eagerness to mark a particular name on my ballot.

As is the case with many Americans, I've never found a candidate who matched the majority of my leanings, forcing me to concentrate on one or two issues that are important to me and holding my nose on the rest.

Oct. 26, 2012: Never too early to help kids

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler


Last Christmas, with her paycheck from working part time at a local mall, Yolanda Adams of Raleigh was able to give her three children some needed clothes - but few toys.

This year, the retail store where Adams worked for three years has gone out of business. With no job, Adams had little hope for a happy holiday. So, along with hundreds of others in the same financial fog, she waited in an hourslong line this week to sign up her children - ages 8, 4 and 1 - for the Salvation Army's Christmas Cheer program.

"Times are hard out here," she said. "I'm a struggling mom just trying to take care of my kids."

Those who work with the Salvation Army of Wake County know that times are hard. The nonprofit is expecting to serve more than 8,500 children this year, up from about 7,800 last year.

"We're hoping it doesn't increase that much, but we're preparing for it," said Haven Sink, director of public relations for the nonprofit. "We certainly have seen just as many families in need. It doesn't seem to be decreasing."

It might be a little hard to think about Christmas before Halloween has even passed. Yet how haunting it would be to be a parent already struggling to feed and house a child with the specter of an empty Christmas hanging over you, too.

Almost 900 people snaked quietly through ropes at an old Winn-Dixie on New Bern Avenue in Raleigh to sign up 1,340 children on Monday alone. By late Wednesday, 4,987 children were registered to receive clothes through the Angel Tree program and toys through the annual Toy Store.

Oct. 24, 2012: Goldman's votes take on a new character

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Startling. Surprising. Game-changing.

That's how news stories in October 2010 described Debra Goldman's mind-blowing, electrifying, astonishing vote to throw out the proposed 16-zone assignment plan that her fellow Republican school board members had crafted.

An elected official doing something so completely unexpected understandably filled us with wonder as to what possibly could have been the motivation.

I remember having what-in-the-world conversations continuously after that vote, trying to plausibly infer why Goldman would upend months of work by the Republican majority on a plan that ended diversity-based assignments and created "neighborhood" schools.

Had Goldman actually come to realize that a plan guaranteed to increase the number of majority-poor schools would be bad for the kids and the county? Had she reluctantly grasped that reality and its difficult details always muddy the promises of campaign rhetoric? Had heat from the public made her too uncomfortable?

Excluded from planning

Goldman, one of four board members elected in 2009 on a pledge to end the socioeconomic diversity policy, said after the vote that she still favored community-based schools. She was upset that she had been excluded from the planning, and she didn't like that the zones also would end assignments based on home addresses.

My theory at the end of the day wasn't that Goldman had had any change of heart. She hadn't moved to the left at all; she had moved to the right of the right.

Her insistence on address-based community schools would mean neighborhood schools in the truest sense, with no room for choice to mitigate the realities of our economically segregated housing patterns.

Oct. 12, 2012: Parkinson's patient pays it forward with drug trials

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

The cells in Jim Simons' brain are dying, ending their production of the signal-transmitting dopamine his body needs to move surely and smoothly.

His hard-to-control hands, he keeps mostly against his body or tucked into pillows on his couch; his legs are tightly crossed. Because chewing and swallowing are sometimes a struggle, Simons, the former director of the N.C. Division of Land Resources, savors food like never before.

"Eating to me is a luxury," says Simons, 64, of North Raleigh. "I don't take it for granted anymore."

Eight years after Simons was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, the drugs he takes to ease his symptoms do give him many "on" hours each day, for which he is intensely thankful. 

They give him hope that a few thousand more fish will find themselves on the end of his line and that his grandchildren, 9 and 7, will enjoy his congratulations on their wedding days.

These life-altering medicines exist because others before him were willing to participate in clinical trials.

Oct. 5, 2012: Mom answers call to feed hungry students on weekends

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Folded onto a plastic bench in an elementary school cafeteria, Darline Johns was eating lunch with her kindergartner, chatting happily about the family's weekend plans, when a little voice from a table over cut in.

"I don't really like weekends," a boy offered.

"Why is that?" Johns asked.

"I'm always hungry," said the boy, who had decayed teeth. "Here at school, I get breakfast and lunch. At home on the weekends, I don't get to eat."

Always hungry?

What is it like to be truly, achingly hungry?

How can any child concentrate on lessons, on behaving well, on homework when an empty stomach is screaming for his attention?

Johns willed herself to hold it together when all she wanted to do was cry.

All the way home from North Chatham Elementary School that day, she thought about how to help that child and others like him.

Online, she found a California program that sent food-filled backpacks home for the weekend with the schoolchildren who receive free and subsidized lunches. 

North Chatham's principal told Johns that she could start such a program but that the school had no money to offer her.

That was four years ago.

With the help of private donations, generous church friends, and neighborhood and Girl Scout food drives, Johns began filling 40 grocery bags each week for children whom teachers had recognized as hungry and whose parents had agreed to receive the help. 

Oct. 3, 2012: Gainey proof of miracles

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Stephen Gainey, acting Wake County schools superintendent, apparently is a man of miracles. 

Did you see it? Not the likeness of his face on a grilled-cheese sandwich or anything. Something far harder to believe.

"Board members from both parties voiced support and respect for him," said a Tuesday news article about Gainey, assistant superintendent for human resources. Gainey, 42, is temporarily taking the system's reins after the board voted 5-4 last week to fire Superintendent Tony Tata.

These are folks who can't even vote unanimously to take a break at a three-hour board meeting.

So, honestly, that there exists a human being who earned support from both sides almost rekindles the little flame of hope - a Democratic-majority board working together, however testily, with a Republican-hired superintendent - that was fire-hosed with Tata's ouster.

Initially tight-lipped with their whys for dumping Tata, the majority members were saying, "You just have to trust us." What they seem to have miscalculated is that, even among those who believe in the direction they want to take the system, the breath-holding was intense; the hope that they would rise above the rancor, extreme.

To shatter that fragile bubble - antagonizing the purse-string-holding Wake County commissioners at the moment the school system needs to go to voters with a billion-dollar bond issue - the reasons needed to be clear and unimpeachable, especially when so many in the county are disinclined to believe them trustworthy at all.

Sept. 28, 2012: School board is out of this world

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

You know that the careening Starship Wake County has turbo-blasted into a whole new dimension of absurdity when you find yourself agreeing with John Tedesco's assessment of things.

"Epic failure" were the on-the-money words he used to describe his fellow school board members' vote this week to fire Superintendent Tony Tata.

Well, that covers E and F. Let's go back a letter and find some D words, too: disappointing, damaging, distracting.

Barring some undisclosed gross malfeasance on Tata's part, getting rid of the superintendent at this critical moment is just destructive. The board is in the middle of creating a third student assignment plan in three years and getting ready to try to sell to the public a $1.2 billion bond issue for school construction needs.

Within 24 hours of Tata's firing, some Wake County commissioners were already making noises about how hard it will be to partner with a leaderless school system on the bond issue now.

Even the folks who were never enamored with hiring a former general as superintendent can't be all that happy with having the waters all a-churn again. Sometimes you have to steady the ship before you can head boldly in a direction, and here we are yet again in the middle of a hurricane.

What winds are blowing here?

Sept. 21, 2012: Student fights for liberty

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Scrolling through Facebook posts, listening to talking heads, cringing at anonymous online commenters can lead to pretty easily identifiable instances of disrespectful or unkind discourse. 

But is asking for civility just another act of censorship?

Derek Spicer of Apex thinks so. And anything that dampens debate on a college campus in particular is just downright dangerous to the N.C. State graduate.

Spicer, 22, spent three years as a resident adviser at NCSU, graduating in May with a degree in political science. In fall 2011, the university instituted a civility statement requiring residents to "speak to each other in a civil manner" and prohibiting the display of items that might be "disrespectful" or "hurtful."

Spicer objected to a policy he considered ridiculously broad and impossible to enforce, especially given that, as an RA, he was the law.

"What if someone puts an Obama poster on the door? Do they have to take it down because conservatives might be offended?" Spicer asked. "How about a Bible verse? Does he have to take it down because it might offend someone?"

Spicer turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit that fights for individual rights, due process and freedom of expression at U.S. colleges and universities.

A letter from FIRE persuaded the university to alter the statement this fall to include: "The University Housing Civility Statement is not intended to interfere in any way with an individual's academic or personal freedoms. We hope that individuals will voluntarily endorse the expectations outlined below."

Spicer, an intern at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, is satisfied with the change. It's not that he's against civility, but he thinks people need to feel free to be passionate.

"Trying to shut down things because it might be 'uncivil' is ridiculous," he said. "It hinders discussion. It hinders debate. If college is supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, that's the opposite message."

Sept. 14, 2012: All she could do wasn't enough

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Kathy Bertrand did everything we tell an abused woman to do. 

She divorced her husband. She got a protective order against him. She got an apartment and a job outside the home after homeschooling her three children for years. She moved on.

A woman with a law degree, Kathy was not unskilled and was looking for work in the legal world.

And yet she was still horrifically murdered in a public shopping center this week by her former husband, who later killed himself.

I can't even type that without crying for this devoted mother with whom I worked at our cherished neighborhood swim meets, her short hair always held back with headbands, her clear eyes sparkling. My heart is broken for her children, her two cute-as-button girls who swam on the team, and her freckle-faced boy.

What more could she have done? What kind of man kills the mother of his children and himself and leaves them orphans?

We can't know the mind of Chris Bertrand. We don't know all of the details of how this relationship played out. 

But we know the general characteristics of batterers who lose the perceived control of their families. 

"We find a lot of times that a common trait is insecurity, low self-esteem, low self-confidence, and being that (way), perhaps his source of feeling like a man was in hurting this woman," said Camilla Eubanks, member services director for the N.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence. "And if that's the culture he was living every day, and she left him, then what is he left with?"

Sept. 7, 2012: Friends in need born when one took a chance

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

DURHAM Elbow to elbow, Bernice Parker and Argin Laney sit on the same side of a restaurant booth, scouring the picture albums and newspaper clippings that chronicle the women's 16-year friendship.

"Look at my babies, Bern," Argin says as they bend their heads close together. "Look at Eric."

"Look at all of them," Bernice says as she swirls her finger over a picture of Argin with six of the nine grandchildren she has cared for since raising seven children of her own.

"Oh, if they were that size now," says Argin, 78.

Together they sigh, then Bernice, 71, puts a hand on Argin's arm, unable to erase the years for her but offering the comfort the two have given each other since 1996, when a news story featuring Argin was published  in The N&O.

The story detailed what was becoming an alarming trend of grandparents rearing their children's children, far too often because the parents abused drugs. At the time, Argin was 62, widowed and caring for the five children of one drug-addicted daughter, the son of another daughterand a great-granddaughter - ranging in age from 10 years to 4 months. All the while, she was working in a school cafeteria.

"She cared enough about her grandchildren to take them," says Bernice, explaining why she contacted Argin after she read the article. "I know what it's like when you have a grandmother who didn't take you in and you end up living with strangers."

Before they were 11, Bernice and her twin sister had been abandoned by their parents twice. So the headline, "When grandparents do it all again," was like a magnet. What she felt even more strongly, however, was the pull of God. 

"I know it was the Holy Spirit speaking to me, telling me to pick up the phone," Bernice says. "It was like someone tapping me on the shoulder, saying this is a good thing for both of you."

Aug. 31, 2012: Blessings flow through earnest band

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

In his every gesture - eyes fervently closing, sure fingers working the guitar, toes tapping its open case - David Dyer displays how deeply he feels the words he is singing, words that he believes God gave him in whole songs of praise and healing.

For the longtime musician and award-winning songwriter, creating music usually is a piecemeal matter of combining hooks he can't get out of his head with a line here or a melody there.

But the 10 original songs on "Taproot," the third CD from Dyer and his Crooked Smile Band, were gifts with no assembly required.

"I feel like the good Lord was talking to me," says Dyer, 50, who calls himself a Raleigh business development guy. "I just took them down."

And now he's trying to give them back.

Every penny of the proceeds from the first 1,000 sales of "Taproot" will go to Haven House, a Raleigh nonprofit that supports young people and their families in crisis, and Wee Care, which provides free, high-quality preschool to at-risk children. The kick-off concert is Wednesday at Hayes Barton Methodist Church in Raleigh.

"My hope is that this project of gratitude and praise will shine some of God's light into this world and bring people closer to His strength, wisdom, beauty, joy and healing," Dyer says.

Aug. 24, 2012: Advocate fights for troubled students

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Tucked inside an inch-thick stack of opinions that lawyer Jason Langberg has written about Wake County's school-to-prison pipeline over the past two years is a small cartoon that puts an exclamation point on his tens of thousands of words.

In it, a man dangles a student from the second-story window of an alternative school as a trampoline held by gang members, a police van and a welfare-system worker waits below. "We can't afford to save this one," the man says, "but don't worry. Someone will catch him."

Langberg, staff attorney at Advocates for Children's Services, is tired of the number of kids whom long-term suspensions push out into what will likely be dismal futures. Last school year, that number was nearly 600 students, which doesn't include the 900 kids banned from buses, effectively parking those with no transportation at home, or the more than 500 in alternative schools.

About 300 received what Langberg considers entirely inadequate, unsupervised online courses. About 300 received ... nothing. 

What happened to them? We don't know. The system keeps no data on those kids, which Langberg finds appalling.

July 20, 2012: Disabled caught in Medicaid quandary

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

PIKEVILLE Jonathan Greeson would like the chance to be the next Warren Buffett.

He would love to use his hard-earned degree in business management from N.C. State University to make some money, pay some taxes, accumulate some wealth.

He would cherish the opportunity to buy his mother a car.

But to keep his Medicaid coverage, Greeson must stay poor.

Greeson, 30, has spinal muscular atrophy, a degenerative motor-neuron disease that has left him incapable of taking care of his most basic needs. He has never walked, and he learned to use an electric wheelchair before he was 18 months old.

Given how often he has been critically ill and unable to work, Greeson is unlikely to find a full-time employer willing to take a chance on him. Last year, he was in the hospital fighting pneumonia, among other things, from October to December.

It was the fourth time that Vance and Connie Greeson nearly lost their son.

July 13, 2012: Speaking, handwriting help impact last

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler
DURHAM One night, with snow settling over the Adirondack Mountains and the innards of a new Family Dollar store going up nearby, Karyn Traphagen's mother had pineapple chunks for dessert.

Pineapple rings would have been fine, too, she said in a long-ago letter to her daughter, but thank heavens no one tried to make the woman eat her pineapple crushed. No, no, no.

Laughter interrupts Traphagen as she shares the seemingly dull and oddly juxtaposed details of her mother's eight-page missive with the audience at Talk Story, a spoken-word variety show. The handwritten letter, shown in a slide, was just one of scores that her mother stamped to Hawaii when Traphagen, a physicist, lived there. 

Sending and receiving those letters was almost like exchanging hugs, her mother believed.

Exactly, I think as I listen to Traphagen, one of seven storytellers at the free event at the Casbah nightclub this week, but it's the handwriting that makes it intimate. Seeing the loops and curls and lines unique to each person is like remembering Grandma's rose-water smell or hearing Daddy's tenor twang. Helvetica ain't Mommy.


Similarly, listening to someone tell a story instead of reading it yourself engages more senses, making the connection more meaningful.

July 6, 2012: Lawyer's service to youths lauded

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Chandler Vatavuk is a uniquely American name, one that melds the maiden name of a mother who traces her Southern roots to the 1600s with the surname of a father whose Croatian parents arrived through Ellis Island after the first World War. 

Fittingly, this melting pot moniker belongs to a young man who has made bettering his country and community his calling. 

Vatavuk, a Durham lawyer and native, has been named one of the Jaycees' Ten Outstanding Young Americans of 2012. Previous winners of the TOYA award, which recognizes those ages 18 to 40 who exemplify the best our country offers, have included John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton.

In his 30 years, Vatavuk has spent thousands of hours volunteering with more than 20 agencies, boards and committees, but it was his work as an advocate for at-risk youth that the Jaycees specifically honored.

It's a passion he's plied since the tender age of 10, when his elementary school principal asked him to tutor his peers during Saturday morning reading sessions at an inner-city community center.

"Seeing a kid get through a tricky passage, the satisfaction that child had when he found out he could do it, it was amazing and heartening to me," says Vatavuk, an N.C. Central University law graduate. "What we appreciate are the things we struggle to achieve."

June 29, 2012: Officer, ticket these, please

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler


We're talking about assault, really - assault with a tasteless weapon. 

When someone uses obscenities and profanities, it can feel like punches to the gut. I nearly always flinch when I hear God's name taken in vain.

Yes, people may say just about whatever they like, but the rest of us should have a right not to hear curse words flying behind us in line at the movies, being spit into cellphones at restaurants or ricocheting across crowded sidewalks.

It's a right that Middleborough, Mass., residents recently recognized, voting to make those who unleash unwanted curse words on the ears of others face consequences. Police officers now can fine the foul-mouthed $20 for each instance of public profanity.

Critics, of course, have raised First Amendment issues, but the new ordinance actually decriminalizes public profanity, allowing police officers to write tickets as they would for traffic violations so that cursing cases don't clog up the courts.

Oh, the fun we could have thinking about all of the other assaults on our senses and sensibilities that deserve to be slapped with citations. 

Officer, ticket these, please:

June 15, 2012: Nonprofit feeds, teaches and helps people grow food

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler
Folding tables lined with oranges, apples and sweet-smelling strawberries. Cardboard bins bursting with cabbage, collards and all kinds of bread. Aproned workers wearing bright and helpful smiles. 

This was the healthful and happy picture that recently greeted folks who moved from a line outside Martin Street Baptist Church into the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle's first mobile market open to all in need in Raleigh.

More than 115 families walked away with bags and boxes stuffed with some of the 10,000 pounds of goods that IFFS had hauled to the church in two refrigerated trucks.

 "I work a part-time job, and I barely make it," Earlyne Bascombe said as she filled a bag with collards. "This is such a blessing."

The mobile market is but one of a multitude of programs offered by the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, whose motto is: "We feed. We teach. We grow. Give a man a fish. Teach a man to fish. Stock the pond for all."

Feed? IFFS is filling the school-year gap by providing breakfast, lunch and snacks this summer to children in low-income areas. In Wake County, where 33 percent of schoolchildren qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, food is available in eight locations.

Teach? The nonprofit offers a culinary job training program that prepares those with severe life challenges for careers in food service. It also offers apprenticeships for teenagers interested in learning how to farm.

Grow? IFFS has its own 6-acre farm in Raleigh and helps low-income neighborhoods start community gardens. 

 "We realize we have to do more than just give people food," said Kia Baker, the agency's director of food recovery and distribution. "We're building the food security system."

June 8, 2012: Tarnished name hard to restore

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Standing on a carpet of freshly mowed grass, I watch my daddy and his sisters pause with reverence before ridding family headstones of faded flowers in our hilltop graveyard.

Etched in this marble or in that decades-old stone high above a little white church in Raccoon Creek, W.Va., are the names of my grandparents, my uncles, some cousins, among others.

As new floral arrangements slip into place, I'm struck by the colorless spots bare of any sign that someone remembers, that someone respects the name found there.

A good name, the book of Proverbs tells us, is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.

During this graduation season, how blessed we would be if our children could embrace that singular truth among the many admonitions they will hear. Actions lead to a reputation, and that is the one thing each of us - no matter our wealth, education or upbringing - can control.

Tarnish a name and unleash pain not only on yourself but also on those who love you, on elderly parents and a daughter who must stand sadly by you through a lurid trial.

What guiding truth somehow escaped John Edwards? 

June 1, 2012: Dangerous-dog owners should get one chance

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

For the Wallers, replaying the memory reel of a recent spring Saturday should bring smiles: Caroline, 7, sets up her first lemonade stand, built with her daddy from a kit. Neighbors stop by to sip and chat. 

The family dog lazes in the morning sun while Chloe, 16, holds the leash.

Horror, however, is what David Waller relives in his sweat-soaked dreams: A female pit bull from three doors down charges up the sidewalk and turns toward his daughters. It fiercely attacks their dog, Emerson, as the leash traps Chloe in the fracas. It bites his wife, Julie, who is trying desperately to drag Emerson by the collar to safety.

"We couldn't budge her," Waller says, describing how he repeatedly punched the pit bull that invaded his North Raleigh yard. "I was putting everything I had on that dog's head, but I was wasting my time."

Only the whistle of the owner's son finally persuaded the dog to release its clamp around Emerson's neck. 

"All I could think about was it brushing past Caroline," Waller says. "What if it had turned on her? There was nothing I could have done. Nothing."

Countless stitches, two drainage tubes and $500 later, Emerson - a copper-colored "all-American," as the Wallers call their sad-eyed mutt - is on his way to recovery. The Wallers' psyches? Not so much.

"I've never been scared more than a few times in my life," says Waller, a self-described flag-waving, law-abiding country boy raised on a farm outside Kinston. "But truly to the marrow of my bones, I was terrified. 

"I don't like to feel like that, especially on this piece of property, our sanctuary, what we've earned, where we should feel safe."

May 25, 2012: Vets hope to help hurting comrades

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler


Five years have passed since John Turner last wore an Army uniform through the streets of Baghdad. At 6-foot-3, the captain was a large target on the 360 combat patrols he led over 16 months during the worst of the Iraq War.

The pain from what he saw there he wears still: in his furrowed brow, in his firmly closed mouth, in his tear-filled eyes as he walks away briefly to compose himself.

It's the aching of his fellow soldiers, however, that he hopes to ease through the Veterans Leadership Council, a nonprofit that is leasing space in Butner to provide a haven where struggling veterans can learn how to be self-reliant again.

Turner and four friends have been working on the project since 2009. About $4 million in federal grants and private donations has been pledged toward the $6 million they need to open the facility. But they are having trouble getting the last $2 million in place because of red tape and state budget constraints.

"If I gave up and didn't try to do this, and no one came behind me, what about that soldier who might have been amazing but he needed some help, he fell apart, he self-diagnosed and started drinking?" Turner says. "If we give up on this, who's going to do it? It's really not an option."

In 2011, VA hospitals in North Carolina treated 4,237 homeless veterans, Turner says. Across the United States, a veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes. These scarred men and women have earned our help.

"The first thing they teach in the military is you take care of your people and you don't leave them behind," says Jeff Smith, a veteran of the Marine Corps reserves and one of the five friends. "Are we living by that? For every one combat death in the past 11 years, there have been 25 suicides. So, pretty bluntly, no."

May 18, 2012: Family still can't drive donated minivan

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler


Sitting in the grass outside Charise Henderson's Raleigh home is a 1995 Ford minivan that the Helping Hand Mission kindly gave her in December. 

Unfortunately, sitting in the grass is all the van has done for nearly six months because the gift didn't come with the vehicle's title. Without the title, the family cannot get the van registered, licensed or insured, says Henderson's mother, Yolanda Henderson. Which means no one can drive it.

That's a real shame, given that the van - or perhaps a different one - was donated to the mission specifically in response to a November column that detailed Charise's difficulties in getting her baby, a liver-transplant recipient, to his medical appointments at Duke University Medical Center in Durham.

Five visits with Yolanda and three trips to the mission have yet to clear up exactly why the van remains untitled. 

Someone was generous enough to donate a van to the mission but didn't sign over the title? 

Willie Thorpe, an employee at the Helping Hand Mission, says he lost it. 

He and another Helping Hand worker have submitted a lost-title form to the DMV several times, he says, but no title has been forthcoming. First, a discrepancy in the model year of the van caused a delay. Now, he says, a title can't be issued because the lost-title form shows Charise's last name as Henderson and her identification shows it as Smith (she is divorced now). 

Until Henderson fills out an $80 affidavit saying she's the same person, Thorpe says, nothing can be done. Mission workers, however, filled out a new lost-title form when they realized they had the van's year wrong, so it would seem they could fill out yet another one with Charise's legal name.

"The ball is in their court now," says Sylvia Wiggins, director of the Helping Hand Mission. Wiggins is a notary public and notarized the lost-title forms.

May 16, 2012: We're mom enough, and we don't need phony controversies

This appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler


I admit it. I winced when I saw the Time magazine cover of a defiant-looking young mother nursing her almost 4-year-old son, posed standing on a kiddie chair and appearing uncomfortable as he suckles her left breast.

That poor child, I thought, is being used as a weapon in a manufactured war.

The strategy could not be more obvious: Let's smack other women in the face with an over-the-top illustration of the attachment-parenting craze and hope they strike back, scream, judge.

A media-made free-for-all is especially delicious when it pits woman against woman, mother against mother, as the magazine clearly intends with its taunting headline: "Are you mom enough?" 

Are you mom enough? 

Seriously? 

Ostensibly, this is an article about the perceived benefits of baby-wearing, extended breastfeeding and co-sleeping. But what we have is a question that plays on insecurities, that dares a woman to say no, that holds this mother up as the queen of some kind of warped sense of courage because her decision to breastfeed to what many people will find a disturbing age and to display her child this way makes her "enough."

Enough. What a perfect word to describe what most parents seek. 

April 27, 2012: Transit savings costly to those who need it

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

The statistics are startling: 

Number of trips that Raleigh's assisted transportation program coordinates each day - 1,500.

Cost of those trips - more than $20,000 a day.

Increase in demand for Accessible Raleigh Transportation over three years - 50 percent. 

Portion of the city's transit budget devoted to ART - nearly 50 percent. 

Portion that comparable cities spend - 13 percent.

And those facts follow even more astonishing numbers that the city found when it commissioned a study in 2009 to get a grasp on the ART growth: The increase in demand over the previous five years was 300 percent; in costs, 800 percent.

"The path that we're on, the cost of services is not sustainable," says David Eatman, the city's transit administrator. "We have had to make some changes."

No kidding. Those changes began in January when a contract with MV Transportation Inc. kicked in. Previously, Raleigh was the only major city in the nation that relied solely on cabs to transport residents who qualified for services under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Now, about 200 of ART's 1,500 daily trips are consolidated into van pools - a change that is projected to save the city more than $500,000 in each of the next three years.

April 13, 2012: Five life lessons from Newt Gingrich

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler


Dream big. Work hard. Learn something new every day. Enjoy life. Stay true to yourself.

As Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich shared these five principles for a successful life to a group of high schoolers in Raleigh this week, I found myself wondering in what ways his detractors could shred this gift of insight. How gleefully people today rip apart every utterance of a politician not on "their" side, never stopping to actually hear anyone anymore.

Open this present, I was willing the 500 kids around me. Think past the coming prom. Appreciate the fact that you're sitting in an auditorium in the United States of America, however broken you might believe it is, listening to a presidential candidate offer wisdom. Know that you have choices. 

Say what you will about Gingrich's proposals to privatize Social Security or drill for oil, topics he somehow made interesting to teens and likely will touch on Saturday as the keynote speaker for the Tax Day Tea Party in Raleigh. On this day, to these students, he was inspiring. 

Imagine who we might be if we could find something to value in every voice - even a voice that many dismiss because of well-documented personal and professional failings.

By the time Gingrich got to his fourth principle, I was smiling, remembering the conversation I'd had just the previous evening with my soon-to-be high school graduate.

What a blessing, I had told my son, that you have a dream, that you can choose a college major that lets you earn money doing something you love, that you're ready to work hard to achieve it. The fact that my son had recently returned from a spring break mission trip ministering to Haitian orphans magnified our thankfulness all the more.

Dreams are like vocabularies, though. We can't reach for things we don't know exist just as we can't use words we've never heard. The degree to which we believe that current circumstances hamper a young person's ability to picture the possibilities is one of the things that divide us.

March 30, 2012: Phone calls ensure all is well

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler



Ask Kitty her age, and she'll tell you she's working on 90. With aunts who lived to 98 and 100, the Garner woman has every intention of seeing the year 2022.

Hoping to help her get there is Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison.

Every day between 3 and 3:20 p.m., an automatic phone call from the sheriff's office in downtown Raleigh rings in Kitty's well-kept doublewide. If Kitty doesn't pick up, the system tries again. Let a second call go unanswered, and a deputy is on the way to make sure Ms. Kitty (whose last name I am omitting for safety reasons) is OK.

"It's a wonderful, wonderful program," Kitty says from her teal recliner, surrounded by her framed, cross-stitched creations. "They check on me every day. You read where people have fallen, and it's a week later they're found. That won't happen to me."

It was after his mama died and he was calling his daddy back in Martin County two or three times a day that Harrison started wondering how many elderly people had no one to check on them. When he became sheriff in 2002, he looked for ways to be that somebody for Wake's shut-ins and elderly singles.

The resulting Citizens Well-check Program began in July 2003 with 13 participants. This year, the sheriff's office is checking in with 74 people from New Hill to Zebulon.

"They have called me in the wintertime when they're saying we're going to have a blizzard," Kitty says. "They call to make sure I'm all right and have medicines and I have food."

But the outreach involves more than phone calls.

March 16, 2012: Raleigh woman uses her blog to share a year of hugs

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

For 339 days now, Melinda Schmitt has been wrapping her community within her slim arms, hoping to create connections and spread kindness through her touch. 

Gas station attendants, Walmart cashiers, garbage-dump workers, South Raleigh neighbors, veterinarian assistants, pediatric nurses, Kroger baggers, church attendees - the auburn-haired woman with expressive brown eyes has politely asked them all: "May I hug you?"

Only four or five people have declined. To the scores who have said yes, Schmitt hopes her gesture conveyed that they are important, that they matter, that they have worth.

"My motive is always gratitude," said Schmitt, 36, a Connecticut native who stays at home with her boys, 5 and 2. "I'm always grateful for that person being in my life at that moment. They've done something for me or had a conversation with me. Gratitude is a very powerful emotion."

Fewer than 30 days remain in what Schmitt christened last April 13 as her Year of Hugs, born of a desire to set off a chain reaction of love in an increasingly divisive world. She chronicles her hug happenings on her blog at myyearofhugs.com so that others can share her joy - and replicate it.

March 9, 2012: A 'woman who was punished'

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

I kept going back to that beautiful smile accentuated by those bright, brown eyes - and then picturing Michelle Young's perfect teeth knocked out of her mouth. 

How much a man must hate a woman to fatally beat her so thoroughly that her teeth end up under her body, under a pillow, on the floor around her.

What level of emotion that must take. What rage.

What stranger would feel that?

For me, though, speculating on what jurors might decide in Jason Young's murder trial always left room for their acquitting him.

In November 2006, Michelle Young was pregnant with her second child when she was found beaten to death in her bedroom. Her 2-year-old daughter, conceived before the marriage, was unharmed, hiding under the covers of her parents' bed.

Blood was spattered on the walls and doors, but the vehicle that Jason Young would have driven after the beating had no traces of blood. Despite scratches on Michelle's throat that indicated a struggle, Jason had only one wound on a toe at the police station four days later.

A "not guilty" verdict wouldn't necessarily have meant jurors believed Young innocent, only that the case wasn't proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Thankfully, "reasonable doubt" does not mean "no doubt," and, like obscenity, each person interprets it differently.

Feb. 29, 2012: Schools should reassess

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler


Assess risks. Shore up weaknesses. Weigh consequences. Tally costs. Aren't those the things military folks do before heading into a horrendously complicated battle?

We seem to have skipped a few of those steps on our way to implementing the nearly incomprehensible Wake County schools assignment plan. It's especially perplexing given that Superintendent Tony Tata is a former general.

To parents becoming frightfully aware of some of those emerging weaknesses, costs and consequences, Tata has said to "wait until the choice process plays out" before sounding the alarm bells.

Anyone paying attention can see that "clang, clang, clang" should already be echoing throughout the land.

Clang. Magnet applications were down this year. School officials seemed surprised. Let me help: Under the old system, if you tried out a magnet and didn't like it, you could return to your base school. If you got into a magnet elementary but didn't like your magnet middle choices, your base awaited.

Now if you try out a magnet and don't like it, there ain't no base to return to. No house in Wake County is assigned to a particular school; parents rank school choices from a list the system provides. 

Feb. 24, 2012: Just missing the will

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

We know how to fix failing families. We just don't have the willpower.

That was the thread running through responses to last Friday's column, in which I asked how we should address irresponsible parents. In the absence of any workable ideas, I said, we should focus on helping at-risk children succeed in school so they can choose lives different from the ones their parents have lived.

One reader offered a three-point plan: First, ostracize all media, stars and leaders who don't condemn those who have children out of wedlock or before age 21 or before having jobs or graduating from high school.

Second, fine fathers who leave their children and all people who have children out of wedlock or children they can't take care of. If they can't pay, we take custody of the kids.

Third, assign criminal penalties, including jail, to those who defy the societal boundaries set above.

So, we're going to create a system for mass condemnation, fine people who generally are poor to start with, then cart them off to prison and spend $27,000 a year to house each offender? 

Feb. 15, 2012: 9 shots to prove he cares

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler

Any hardworking, caring parent who has fought the urge to knock teeth down a rebellious teenage throat through which ungratefulness is spewing understands why Tommy Jordan shot his daughter's laptop computer.

That's right. Shot it. Nine times. With his .45. Not that the gun or the bullets are the subject here. They are just the exclamation point on the end of the sentence.

And what Jordan seems to be saying is this: I love my daughter enough not to rob her of a capacity for shame! I love her enough that I will blow holes in her inflated sense of entitlement, literally and figuratively, so that she will be an adult who contributes well to a society that can actually tolerate her!

In case you aren't one of the millions who have viewed the viral online video of the laptop's demise, Tommy Jordan is a North Carolina man who this month spent several hours and considerable money upgrading his 15-year-old daughter's computer.

During the process, Jordan - the owner of an IT company - ran across a Facebook post by his girl, who had been punished previously over inappropriate posts. The first time, she lost electronic privileges for three months, and Jordan told her a subsequent infraction would result in worse repercussions.

So it's not as if she hadn't been warned. Warnings are welcome in good-parenting manuals.